Contest to Win $1599 Worth of Artbeats Footage!

Our newest sponsor Artbeats is kicking things off with us by giving you the opportunity to win $1599 worth of Artbeats stock footage of your choice. If you want to win, you're going to have to work a little for it. Here's what you need to do:

- Print out this pdf

- Go to the Artbeats website and find the clip that is pictured in the pdf using your best guesses at associated keywords.

- Fill in the name of the clip and your name in the form area in the pdf.

- Bring the form to our next meeting, currently scheduled for Thursday December 10th. All entries with the correct clip name will be put in a hat, from which one winning entry will be pulled.

So it's really not that hard. To be eligible to win, you must be present at our next meeting, and you must be a member of our group at the time of our drawing. All you have to do to accomplish that is click the "Sign Me Up" link over there in the left column.

While you're over on the Artbeats website, you might want to join in on their main Scavenger Hunt contest, where they are giving away over $40,000 worth of footage and prizes, including a 17" MacBook Pro.

Good Luck!

October Meeting Follow-up

Updated 10-23-09 2:04pm: Uploaded and added link to Hitchcock Storyboard pdf.

A special thanks to John Pinella who brought in his recently acquired Red ONE camera for us to take a look at. Also a special thanks out to our sponsors: Gen Arts (our newest sponsor), Noise Industries, Crowd Control, Peach Pit Press, Focal Press, Duncan Video, and our generous hosts at FOX59.

My keynote presentation is now available to download from our Downloads Page. The .pdf file has live links directly to the iTunes Store for the iPhone applications I talked about last night.

The storyboard created using the iPhone app Hitchcock is also available to download from our Downloads Page.

A couple other things we talked about:

   - The new V/DSLR cameras that Nikon and Canon recently introduced. We showed Vincent Laforet's video "Nocturne" which was shot with the Canon 1D Mark IV courtesy of Stu Maschwitz's YouTube sight (Stu worked on the video as well). You can read about the details behind the shoot on Vincent's blog and Stu's blog. I also mentioned that Laforet will be in Muncie on November 3 at the Civic Center. You can get info and purchase tickets at Jack's Camera website. 

   - Apple released new iMacs this week that look to be a significant bump over previous additions. The high end iMac uses the same quad-core processor that the Mac Pro's use, and also allows up to 16GB of RAM now. Throw in a new 27" LED screen with the same horizontal resolution of the 30" Cinema Display, and it should make for a pretty computer. They also released a new mouse, Magic Mouse. It is essentially a multi-touch aware two button mouse. One downside - as of now it looks like there is no support for a middle mouse button click, which could be problematic when working in Color or other apps (such as 3D apps). 

After a raffle of some items provided by our sponsors, we called it a night. Be sure to keep an eye here on the website for next month's meeting details. It will be taking place Dec. 10 due to the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.

October Meeting

Everything is in place for our first Thursday night meeting, this Thursday, October 22 at 7:30 pm at our usual meeting place of Fox59. 7:30? Yep, We need to push the start of the meeting back a half hour just for this meeting. The meeting will end as usual between 9 and 9:30.

FCPUG member John Pinella will be joining us and bringing his Red ONE camera with him. John will talk about his experiences with the camera so far. We'll also take a look at some useful iPhone/iPod Touch apps related to video production, along with our usual Q&A and Tips & Tricks.

Remember - 7:30 start on Thursday. Hope to see you there!

September Meeting Cancelled & Date Changes

Our September meeting has been cancelled. Neither of our two main presenters were able to make it, so we're going to take a little fall break until October.

When we return from break, there will be one new change. Our meetings have always been on the fourth Tuesday of the month, and that has never changed in the 6 1/2 years we've existed. Until now. FOX59 has asked us to move our meetings to Thursday nights. So starting with our October meeting, we will now meet on the fourth Thursday of the month. Hope that doesn't throw to many of you for a loop, or cause any conflicts. We'll see how it goes and if there are problems or complaints, we'll take another look at it early in 2010.

Odds & Ends

Quite a bit has been happening lately, so I thought I'd throw a post up with several unrelated but interesting developments...

- One week after our lat meeting discussing the Canon 5D MarkII, Canon (possibly) one-ups themselves with the 7D. It's not a full frame sensor, but it's still huge compared to a 1/3" or 1/2" sensor video camera. They knocked it out of the park with other features though, including 29.97, 25, or 23.976 fps at 1080p. You can even go to 60fps at 720p. Autofocus is still missing, and the LCD is fixed in place on the back of the camera, but this really fills in huge gaps that the 5D Mark II has. Oh yeah, and it's $1100 cheaper than the 5D Mark II! Some more reading (and viewing) material for you if you're interested

* DP Review Hands on Preview

* Stu Maschwitz on the 7D

* Video sample from Canon Japan

- Our friends at Noise Industries have just released FxFactory 2.0.9. Included with the bug fixes is two new plug-ins and a free trial for a stereoscopic plugin.

- A member of the San Francisco FCPUG has created an iPhone app with keyboard shortcuts for Final Cut Pro called FCP Shortcutz.

- Even if you can't make it to Amsterdam for the Final Cut Pro User Group Network Supermeet in conjunction with IBC, you can download the magazine as a pdf file for free. It's packed with 171 pages of great info. Get it here!

- For those of you that dabble in 3d animation, or would like to, one of the easiest products on the market to learn, Cinema 4D, was just updated to release 11.5. It is being used increasingly for broadcast animations and graphics, and Maxon has taken note by creating a Broadcast Edition. The new version of C4D r11.5 includes support for moving your cameras, lights, and paths from C4D to Motion for easier compositing.

- Postapalooza 2009 is a post production conference with sessions on Final Cut Studio, After Effects, shooting, and a lot more. They will be in Florence, Indiana October 19th & 20th. If you register before September 27th, the cost is only $249.

That's all for now. Keep your eyes here as we'll have an announcement regarding the September meeting soon.